Smoothie Bites
Snack of the future, that might almost be here
Brief
This was a project at Aalto university, which allowed us to work together with Fazer to come up with a snack of the future. The brief was given in 2017 and asked us to create the hit snack for the year 2022.
My role
We worked as a group of four that shrunk down to three during the project and we all contributed equally to the ideation process and coming up with the final concept for the snack. However, my special responsibility was to function as the graphic designer as well and come up with the visual identity for the brand.
Concept
We wanted to create a snack that was both filling and fresh as that is something that is often missing from ‘on the go’ snacks. Either the snack is filling but dry, like a oat snack bar, or it is fresh but doesn’t take the hunger away effectively, such as a smoothie. What we came up with was Smoothie Bites, a snack that would combine all the best elements of ‘on the go’ snacks. Below you can see a visual representation of the structure of this snack. The main target audience for this snack is the busy and active millennials who are just starting out their careers, especially women. This target audience often needs a relief from their busy lives, even if for just a moment, and Smoothie Bites was created to help them to achieve that.
Logo
Fazer has many different styles of logos across all their different product lines, which often are playful and stylized, sometimes even hand written, such as in the Fazer logo itself. This is the guideline that I used to come up with the typography logo for the Smoothie Bites brand. The typography is intentionally a very different style of handwriting compared to the Fazer logo as this brand aims to be less classy and more relaxed.
Visual identity
This snack needed to appeal to the young career oriented people who would want to buy this product both for its convenience and functionality. Additionally, we wanted to make packaging cheerful as the target audience would most likely be surrounded by stressful things related to their quickly changing lifestyles.
Color
The colors were chosen to be yellows, oranges and reds as those are warm and active colors that elicit emotions such as fun, enthusiasm and energy. The blue color used in the branding is meant to connect the brand to Fazer.
Shapes
Shapes used in this visual identity were simplified representations of the Smoothie Bites themselves being textured by both the negative space left in the middle of the spheres, as well as the water color texture coloring the spheres. Other than that, rest of the shapes were defined by straight lines to create visual contrast between them and the spheres.
Imagery
The original presentation of this product did not include any other imagery aside from the watercolor texture and the mockup of the packaging. However, if additional images would be used for the marketing campaign, those images would show active and happy people enjoying Smoothie Bites on the go or maybe even in the office depending on the marketing context.
Mockup
To create a concrete and more tangible feeling product for the presentation I created this mockup of the packaging. It is important to give clients a feeling of tangible results and outcomes in any project, which is why using mockups is extremely beneficial.
Process
The basic process I follow with most of my design work was cut a bit short during this project as there was no external client, but rather the brand was created for a university project. The main bulk of this project was actually the creation of the concept for the snack, including its reason for being and value creation for the target audience, as well as the actual concrete product itself. The project was then finalized by creating the brand and visuals surrounding it.
1. Problem definition
Here we first defined several possible problems that we could take on with products such as snacks, and narrowed it down to what we thought would be the most interesting one to tackle. The problem we ended up choosing was the stress caused by a hectic lifestyle. A big problem I know, but we wanted to challenge ourselves and even though our product wouldn’t solve the whole problem, it would at least provide some relief.
2. Creating the Product Concept
Firstly, we wanted the product to be able to be eaten on the go, and secondly, we wanted it to be both filling and delightfully fresh. We thought that this would be the best way to create a product that could be eaten for example while moving from a meeting to another if needed. After a lot of discussion about different ways of using fruits in snacks and how smoothies could be created into snackable pieces, we ended up landing on the final design of Smoothie Bites.
3. Creation of the Logo
After doing some quick benchmarking of the different products Fazer offers, I dived straight into creating the logo for Smoothie Bites. A few sketches of different logo possibilities, but no revisions or external feedback outside of the final approval of the team.
4. Finalizing the Visual Identity
Here I paid most attention to the goal of the product and wanted to create a matching visual style to reflect the message and feeling that the product was going for. The process itself was again done without outside influences, just some benchmarking and frequently referencing the vision we had for the product.
5. Creating Other Components
Finally, the most important component to create a sense of tangibility for the product was the packaging mockup. This was done by using the style defined by the visual guidelines and united with the rest of the branding to create the visuals presented to Fazer.
What I learned?
This project taught me to both create a concept and visualize the feelings desirable for the product to elicit, namely fun, enthusiasm, and energy. In my later work this has proven to be especially important when trying to communicate the meaning and value behind the product to the target audience.
I found that it is extremely beneficial in such business concept creation processes to begin by figuring out the problem that needs to be solved first, instead of diving head first into brainstorming the product. This helps the creative efforts to be more focused and makes sure that the ideation is heading towards a valuable solution as the problem has already been deemed worth solving in the previous step.
Feedback
The product was very well liked by the Fazer representatives and especially the mockup caught their eye. They also said that they would not be disappointed if they would receive such visuals from an advertisement agency. To me this meant that we had nailed the look and feel of the product and they appreciated the premise of as well.